Thursday, 3 December 2015

Over the ten years that I had been a grandmaster, my chess style had undergone significant changes. [...] In 1960, when I first became USSR champion, the journalist V. Vasiliev interviewed me, and then wrote an article entitled 'The Bishop Move', which became widely known. I told Vasiliev that I valued highly the art of defence in chess, that I saw an unusual form of romanticism in this, and that for my success I was chiefly indebted to my ability to save difficult positions. From that time, right to the present day, all this has been cited in numerous publications. But meanwhile a man, even at a mature age, is capable of changing his views. There came a time when I realized that the ability to defend was - for a good chess player - insufficient. You can't be dependent upon your opponent's will, but must try to impose your will on him. I realized that I was restricting my possibilities both as a person and as a chess player.From childhood I had known how to defend, and nothing more. I had to relearn, and to a certain extent I was successful. I would put down my success in the 1960s, and my rise in stature as a chess player, to the fact that I learned how to fight for the initiative and to maintain it.

Sunday, 22 November 2015

This game was fairly even until I made my 24th move. The idea of using my bishop to push back Dane's queen seemed sound at the time, but of course he could (and did) then safely take the bishop with his queen - if I took his queen with my queen, he could fork my king and queen and keep his lead. It was all downhill for me from there.

Dane definitely 'won' the opening on this game, I think mainly due to (me not foreseeing) his pawn advance on move 9. He then miscalculated with his knight on move 24, allowing me to equalise piece-wise. As soon as I was looking slightly better (rook and king each, with me one pawn up), I offered a draw, which was accepted. I've played Dane a handful of times previously, only getting a draw and a win on one day - the rest he's won, so I'm happy getting a draw.

Wednesday, 29 July 2015

My brother Brendan popped around for a visit last weekend. While he was here, we had a game of chess over a cheap bottle of chardonnay.

I was getting pushy at the start, and commented around move 9, "All this just to get a bishop?"

He replied, "Oh yeah, I'd better take it then," and then I realised the trouble I was in - I had no way of saving my queen. My own 9th move should've been to shift my white-square bishop to another square (a few options seem good), so that it was guarding the square it had vacated, preventing the knight from going there.

I can't quite recall the sequence of moves after this, but I somehow managed to even things up, and eventually I was actually better off coming into the endgame by having a rook to his knight (and a few pawns each). A silly hasty move saw me accidentally sacrificing the rook for no gain, and it was soon all over.